Roll for Magic Hands
by Stealth Noodle
Summary: In which the Monster World game degenerates. "That's too far in-character! Way too far in-character!"


**Title** : Roll for Magic Hands  
 **Rating** : SFW  
 **Wordcount** : 3,135  
 **Summary** : In which the Monster World game degenerates. "That's too far in-character! Way too far in-character!"

 **Note** : Manga canon. Also, silly.

* * *

"Tch, the hell with this." The other Bakura closed his fist around the dice and folded his arms on the table. "Rocks fall. Everybody dies."

Yuugi had only a moment to be puzzled before he found himself standing in a fast-expanding shadow. He tilted his head back and yelped at the boulders hurtling toward him like monstrous raindrops. Panic rooted him in place.

"Stop! I challenge this!"

The other Yuugi's voice was scarcely audible over the screaming on the game board, but the rocks obediently halted, hovering at the level of the castle's bloody spire. The players on the board fell silent but continued to stare upward with saucer-wide eyes. An instant later Jounouchi and Honda broke away from what both immediately tried to insist had been a manly warrior's embrace.

Jabbing his finger at his opponent, the other Yuugi continued, "You have to roll for something like that! You can't just declare it!"

"Oh, can't I?" The other Bakura used his uninjured hand to wave around a thick rulebook. "GM Fiat. As game master, I have final say over all game events. Which means—" his grin turned sadistic as he set down the book and raised his fingers to snap— "that rocks fa—"

"Give me that!" The other Yuugi snatched the book and flipped to the index.

Something tugged at Yuugi's sleeve. "GM Fiat is considered bad form," White Wizard Bakura told him earnestly. "I promise the game isn't usually run this way."

"Yeah," Yuugi replied, eyeing the rocks, "I'd sure hope not." His pokii and dragon nuzzled his arms and made worried noises.

In a series of hops, Anzu made her way over to them. "C'mon," she said, grabbing Yuugi's wrist, "let's get out of here while they're arguing!" Their bases clacked together as she tried to pull him.

"That wouldn't do any good, I'm afraid." White Wizard Bakura pointed at the boulders with his staff. "There are enough of those to cover the entire board. Besides, we can't go anywhere without triggering a random encounter roll."

Empty clicking and a loud curse indicated that Honda had just confirmed his inability to fire his gun without the permission of the dice. Yuugi turned to watch him wave his weapon impotently overhead.

With a frustrated noise, Anzu reclaimed his attention. "Yuugi, can't you think of anything?"

At the moment, he was thinking of a hazy, rose-tinged future in which he had saved the day and Anzu's lips were against his own instead of pressed tight together. "Well..."

"Aha!" The other Yuugi slammed the open rulebook down in front of his opponent and pointed to the middle of the page. "As a player, I am entitled to question your logic, and I demand to know where the rocks came from!"

The other Bakura rolled his good eye. "A wizard did it."

"But why? What does this wizard stand to gain from destroying all life?"

"He spent five minutes in a room with you, and now he's a suicidal misanthrope."

The other Yuugi raised his dice triumphantly. "In that case, I can make a roll based on my charisma."

Jounouchi whooped and waved his sword. "You tell 'em, Yuugi!"

The other Bakura flicked him face-down and cackled.

Pointing as if he expected bullets of vengeance to fire from his forefinger, the other Yuugi bellowed, "You'll pay for that!"

"Ha, big words." The other Bakura sneered. "And you don't get a roll—the wizard is level twenty and immune to human charms."

The other Yuugi narrowed his eyes. "Then it's a good thing my character is a half-elf."

As they entered into a lively debate about biology and the implications of a piece of flavor text, Yuugi, Anzu, and Honda pulled Jounouchi upright. White Wizard Bakura seemed fixated on the argument going on overhead; he craned his neck back as far as it would go and turned his head as if he were watching a celestial tennis match.

"Asshole," Jounouchi muttered, dusting himself off with his massive mitten-hands. "No offense, Bakura, but I wanna rearrange his face."

Bakura nodded without taking his eyes off the figures looming above the board. "None taken. Of course, I'm not really Bakura."

Jounouchi groaned. "Man, this is getting confusing. You're still a good guy, right?"

"Oh, of course!" White Wizard Bakura smiled brightly. "I just meant that, while I'm certainly part of him, I'm a few things he's not, and he's so much more than what I am." He paused thoughtfully, as if he had half-forgotten his audience. "He created me as an outlet, I think."

Honda coughed. "Is that why you're wearing a dress?"

"That's a _robe_." Anzu tapped her staff against her base. "Look, can we just get out of here? I don't wanna hang around with the floating rocks and the dying demon."

The remaining half of Zorc gurgled and twitched.

As Yuugi opened his mouth to reply, the dispute above him reached a breaking point. With an incoherent snarl, the other Bakura slammed his right fist against the table before storming out of the room. The other Yuugi gave chase.

"He's going to get the supplemental manuals," said White Wizard Bakura. "Bakura will be very upset if he bleeds on them."

His casual certainty prompted Yuugi to ask, "How do you know that's what he's doing? Or are you just guessing?"

"I don't have to guess. I'm down here, but Bakura's still mostly up there, and since I'm a piece of him—"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Jounouchi turned his attention to the castle. "Why don't we go back inside where the rocks can't smash us?"

Honda crossed his arms. "What, so we can fall in an acid pit or something? No way, man. That place is like Death T all over again."

"There _is_ an acid pit," White Wizard Bakura chimed in. He beamed as he began to gesture: "It's underneath a trick floor that crumbles if you step on the blocks in the wrong order, and the only way to find the correct sequence is to get past the hellhounds in the..." He trailed off sheepishly. "Well, it's fun when it can't really kill you."

The boulders continued to loom. "Hey," Yuugi said, in a burst of inspiration, "maybe we could all fit under the drawbridge!"

White Wizard Bakura frowned. "But the random encounters—"

"Eh, I don't see anybody here to roll the dice." Slinging his sword over his back, Jounouchi hopped down the ramp. "Race ya!"

* * *

Two arguments over unfair head starts later, they had all managed to fit, but only just. Tiny clacks rang out as Honda and Jounouchi vied for space; between that and White Wizard Bakura's grumpy recitation of encounter odds, Yuugi was especially pleased to be pressed primarily against Anzu. If she hadn't been a figurine, he would have been able to smell her hair. As it was, he smelled paint and polymer clay.

"We get it, we get it!" Jounouchi snapped, taking out his loss of territory to Honda on the next greatest cause of irritation. White Wizard Bakura paused sourly mid-word. "We should've had to fight giant bugs or whatever. Just can it, okay?"

Anzu held up a hand. "What he means is, can you tell us what the other Yuugi and Bakura are doing? Please?"

Placated, White Wizard Bakura closed his eyes and cocked his head. "Hmm. They're consulting the errata."

"Aw, man, we're gonna be stuck like this all day!" Honda clinked against the edge of the castle, reigniting his boundary dispute with Jounouchi.

"I just wish they'd be more careful," White Wizard Bakura continued, heedless of the elbows flying near his head. "Some of those books are out of print now." His eyes widened. "Oh, and we're about to lose our cover."

The words were scarcely out of his mouth before a mixture of stomping and bickering heralded the return of the only two players still in flesh-and-blood bodies. The other Bakura cut himself off mid-sentence to demand, "Where the hell—oh, you think you're clever, do you?"

The drawbridge rose and retracted, revealing the scowling visage of the other Bakura. As the other Yuugi went on arguing vehemently in the background, his hand descended like the claw of a UFO catcher and picked up Anzu by her hat.

In a rush of adrenaline Yuugi grabbed her base, only to be shaken off. He hit the board crying her name as the rest of his friends hopped helplessly, grasping at thin air. The dragon and the pokii took flight and were swatted.

"Bakura!" The other Yuugi grabbed his opponent by the wrist, swinging Anzu through a vertiginous arc. She yelped and waved her arms. "Do you have so little honor as a gamer that you'd stoop to—"

"Shut up and look!" With a snort of annoyance, the other Bakura dangled Anzu between his thumb and forefinger so that they both could see her. "Fine," he spat. "Hair can cover the ears. Damned stupid elf designs."

The other Yuugi's frown twisted briefly with triumph as he nodded at Anzu, who blushed. When he looked back at the other Bakura, righteous wrath again suffused his features. "You've conceded the point. Now _put her down_."

The other Bakura all but slammed Anzu back on the board. The moment his fingers parted, she leapt up and bit him. He let out an undignified shriek and sent her skidding across the terrain.

"Anzu!" Yuugi meant to catch her heroically in his arms before she slid to a stop, but friction and cartoon anatomy sent him tumbling face-down into her feet. Whatever points he might have earned for the drawbridge had probably just been negated.

With Jounouchi's help they disentangled and stood, just in time to find White Wizard Bakura returning from a thoughtful stare off into space.

"They've reached an agreement," he announced. "They're going to roleplay the family history of Yuugi's character."

Jounouchi wrinkled his oversized nose. "Why?"

"To settle the issue of his modifiers. We didn't bother filling out a great deal of the character sheet, you see, since this was meant to be a short, combat-oriented game, and it's too late to assign traits fairly now." White Wizard Bakura cocked his head attentively, then added, "They're starting with his grandmother on his mother's side."

Honda pointed his gun at his temple and clicked the trigger.

* * *

They sprawled as comfortably as their bases allowed, making no effort to get a good view of the players, who were locked in an antagonistic round-robin story punctuated by the occasional dice roll. Somehow, a five-minute conversation between a wizard and a half-elf required at least three hours of backstory.

Honda glowered at a displeasing spot on the game board. "Do they have to do voices? The other Yuugi's elf princess is freaking me out."

"At least it isn't sort-of-your voice pretending to be an entire kingdom of enslaved birdtails," said White Wizard Bakura. "I think there's something a bit wrong with him."

As if on cue came squawks of "No, Your Highness! Not the pinions! Rawwwk!"

In the distance, Zorc's remains wheezed.

"Hey, Anzu," Yuugi began, only to be interrupted by his other half bellowing, "Aha! Then it's settled!" The group tottered upright and hopped eagerly to the edge of the field, boosting each other up the ridge of mountains for a better view.

What had been settled turned out to be a minor point of elven court etiquette. They collectively groaned.

"Is it too late to take our chances with the rocks?" Honda asked. After a glance up at them, he shuddered. "Never mind."

The other Bakura leaned forward, bracing himself on his good hand and using the other to clumsily wag a finger in his opponent's face. Blood dripped onto a stack of looseleaf papers. "You _can't_ roll well enough to impress Glibsilver the Gilded Tongue. Now, his companion, Clebert the Social Maladapt, would be more than happy to worm his way into your family tree."

With a derisive snort, the other Yuugi knocked his hand aside. "Princess Illuviarwen has standards. And what about my circumstantial bonuses? According to this chart, my birdtail musk perfume adds twenty points to my success range."

"The bard's allergic."

"Oh? He wasn't when he drank the musk tea."

The other Bakura growled.

Anzu sighed. "Do you think they even remember we're here?"

"I have faith in the other me," Yuugi replied. "I'm sure he won't forget about us."

"Good thing we're action figures, or I'd be really hungry by now." Jounouchi patted his hand against his stomach. "On second thought, I'm hungry anyway."

So was the other Bakura, apparently; he kept licking his lips. Whatever he and the other Yuugi were arguing about now involved lowered voices and heavier breathing.

"These are supposed to be Yuugi's parents, right?" Honda asked. "So they're almost done?"

"Princess Illuviarwen is his mother," replied White Wizard Bakura. "This scene will determine his father and, by extension, his hereditary charisma bonus."

Honda grimaced. "And Bakura plays this game for _fun?"_

The sound of rattling drew Yuugi's attention back to the floor. His other self rolled the dice into an empty box, the results of which were blocked from Yuugi's view but obvious enough from the spirited invective of the other Bakura.

"Way to go, other me!" he cheered. "Was that the last roll?"

"Not quite," White Wizard Bakura said. "The princess has enticed the bard to her chambers. This next roll should settle everything."

"Finally!" Honda hopped in place. "Hey, other Yuugi! Roll a crit and I'll buy you victory fries at Burger World!"

Jounouchi patted his stomach. "Oh man, now all I can think about is burgers."

"Seriously?" Anzu grabbed his head and angled it toward the hovering rocks. "Does that help?"

"Nope. They look like lumpy burgers."

"C'mon, guys," Yuugi said, "let's focus! The other me needs our support!"

The two players had scooted quite close to each other in the sea of books and papers, with only the empty box between them. The other Bakura closed half what little distance remained to sneer, "Glibsilver's seen better."

"Glibsilver's kidding himself," the other Yuugi replied. "Roll for seduction!" He let the dice fall into the box, glanced at the results, and smirked as he leaned in close to the other Bakura's face. His lips remained parted even after he had said, "That's a critical success."

"I still get a save." The other Bakura seemed to be experiencing similar difficulties with keeping his mouth closed. He scooped up the dice but did not roll, instead tightening his fist around them as the other Yuugi further invaded his personal space.

"Whoa, other me! That's too far in-character! Way too far in-character!" Yuugi waved his stubby arms frantically as his other self reached for a button on Bakura's shirt. "Are you even listening? Stop that! What are you doing with—"

Their lips met. Yuugi gaped for several horrified seconds until Anzu clapped her hands over his eyes, whereupon he began to wail.

When he had to stop for breath, he heard Jounouchi bellowing, "Break it up, you two! Enough with the—hey! Dammit, Yuugi, don't put that in your mouth! You got no idea where it's been!"

"You're not helping!" Anzu snapped.

Another pair of hands patted Yuugi's shoulders. "Stay strong, man," said Honda. "We'll get you girly mags later."

Girly mags sounded nice.

Anzu's mitten-hands tensed against his eyebrows. "Don't even think about it. You two corrupt him enough as it is."

Jounouchi snorted. "You want 'corrupt,' you oughta see his stack of—"

"Hey!" Yuugi blurted. "Are they still..." Verbs failed him, and gestures would have required him to draw too deep from the well of imagination. Yuugi waved his hands in abstract distress.

"Yeah, and it sure ain't pretty."

There came a thoughtful hum. "Oh, I don't know," said White Wizard Bakura, carpeting the table in awkwardness. Horrible wet noises filled the silence until Yuugi clapped his own hands over his ears.

Moments later, the muffled rumble of an argument began to seep through. Yuugi had the foresight to make sure his eyes were screwed shut before Anzu's hands departed in pursuit of Jounouchi's face. When Yuugi unblocked his ears, they registered the rapid clacking of figurine bases.

Yuugi turned in what he thought was the general direction of Honda and asked, "Are they _still_ —"

He heard the clatter of dropped dice, followed by a sharp snap and the first note of an enraged howl. Yuugi risked opening an eye and saw his other self, bare-chested and thoroughly disheveled, standing with the Millennium Ring clutched in his hand and its broken cord draped over his wrist. "I believe," he said, with a smug look at Bakura's unconscious form, "that I have won the charisma roll."

Jounouchi whistled to get his attention. "Way to go! Now put your shirt back on!"

"Wait!" Pink crept into Anzu's cheeks as she hastened to add, "Uh, shouldn't you worry about that after we're back to normal?"

As Yuugi tried to work out whether it made sense to be jealous of his own body, his other self sat down in front of Bakura's laptop and stared intently at the screen. His forefinger pecked its way over the keys with almost comical difficulty.

Anzu's blush faded as she frowned at Yuugi. "You promised me you'd stop slacking off during keyboarding."

"Lay off him," Jounouchi said, slinging an arm around Yuugi's shoulders. "Poor guy's all traumatized now."

Three tortuously slow clicks later, the rocks vanished, briefly ceding their space in the sky to chunks of the Zorc figurine. Yuugi's ears rang from the explosion.

"Hey, watch it!" Jounouchi yanked him backward as a horned fragment of Zorc's head crashed into the board, nicking Yuugi's base. The other Yuugi's hands cupped over them as a shield against the remaining projectiles.

When the giant hands lifted, White Wizard Bakura bent over the nearest fragment of Zorc and ran his hand almost dolefully over a chipped horn. "This was beautiful craftsmanship," he said, oblivious of the looks being directed at him. "Bakura puts his whole heart into every figurine. It's almost a shame to see this one ruined, don't you think?"

"No," the rest of the party replied in unison. Honda aimed his gun at a bit of leg and squeezed the trigger in a series of empty clicks.

Jounouchi thumped Yuugi encouragingly on the shoulder and said, "You holding up okay, pal?"

"Except for the part where I'll never be able to look Bakura in the eye again, yeah."

The other Yuugi leaned low over the board, concern etched into every angle of his face. "Have I upset you? Have I done wrong by you?"

"Not exactly, just..." Yuugi fidgeted under the intensity of his gaze. "Other me, I think we need to talk about _appropriate_ ways to win."


End file.
